Scottish Sausage...

Aye. So, the chief high heid yin puddin' is back in, and with an independent mandate to do whatever he deems necessary. Watching the gnashing and wailing by Labour this morning was interesting - one particular stalwart was decrying the SNP's campaign as being focussed on Salmond alone, electing him as First Minister, rather than the party as government, clearly inferring that it was therefore his personality that had carried the nationalists to power; and then contradicting any suggestion that the blandness of Iain Gray had in any way contributed to Labour's downfall, telling us that personality does not win elections.

Personally I reckon the thing that did Labour a great disservice was the basic negativity of their campaigning. Tell us what you will do, not all the awful things the others will land on the country. That Gray was... well... gray, and that's seen as a possible deciding factor is a sad indictment on our political system. Personality over politics. Polish trumps [ ]. Although in this case the politics were so closely aligned that perhaps personality really was the order of the day.

What this result doesn't do, which the pre-election doom-mongers suggested, and the media now reports as fact, is guarantee independence for Scotland. It's talked about as if it might almost be a done deal now. Sure it will be higher up the agenda, but the Scottish government cannot simply declare independence. There will (possibly, probably, maybe) be a referendum, and you can be damned sure that the turnout will be higher than the (roughly) 50% at this election. The SNP mandate comes from around 25% of the Scottish electorate. And of that 25% not all of them would actually vote for independence. So the SNP's starting point is probably around 15-20% of the electorate being all for independence at the moment.

Or put another way, 80-85% don't want independence, or are apathetic enough not to vote for it.

They can work on that, sure, but this is a big deal, and I'm not sure even a 5 year term is enough to bring that figure round to over 50%. I may be proved wrong, but I'd be willing to lay a very high wager that if we have a referendum within the next 5 years, the results of that vote will be a pretty strong 'no'. That referendum was, remember, supposed to take place during the previous term. And no matter what anyone from the SNP says, the reason they didn't lay the option before the people is because they know it's a notion that would have lost. And it's taken almost 40 years from the last time it was voted on (when, it has to be said, Westminster sneakily moved the goalposts) before even the vague chance of the people deciding again has been resurrected.

Lose such a vote now and who knows when we'd next be given the choice.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... Not much has changed really, and if there is a referendum, well no matter which way the vote goes it will therefore be the will of the people and we have to abide by that. It's called democracy. No matter how much our beloved leader looks like a slimey chubby despotic dictator.

The AV vote is more depressing. And let me say this, if you voted 'no' because you think that the AV option wasn't good enough, or wasn't truly proportional, then you're a muppet - how long do you think it will now be before we're actually offered proper PR? This vote will have killed off that option for a long long time, instead of offering a stepping stone. But then I said that yesterday as well, and before that, and no-one listens to me... :P

------

End of the working week, and a good one. Four weeks in and it's still going well. Shock horror! Some genuinely interesting bits of work, and some research that is keeping me busy. Nice people, relaxed atmosphere, etc etc etc. Add to that the fact that I thought I wouldn't be paid till the 20th of this month due to starting after the cutoff date of the 8th of April for payment in April, then finding out yesterday I was actually paid, so I'm not using the overdraft I'd organised, and I've got a wee bit of my redundancy therefore left over... Bike bits to finally build up the frame I got for Christmas have now been planned (actually, started, since I had a stack of bike shop vouchers for my birthday last weekend).

All of that said though, I'm still really looking forward to the weekend.